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Gustave Courbet's painting The Origin of the World is a provocative icon of modern art. Painted in 1866 by an artist who shocked contemporaries with his tough depictions of real life, it can still shock today. It portrays a woman's thighs, torso, part of one breast - and, at the centre of attention, her genitals.

Art historians have, quite frankly, gone nuts over this painting. It has been seen as anticipating the erotic humour of Marcel Duchamp, saying all kinds of things about gender, sexuality and voyeurism. The fact that it was once owned by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan has added to its aura of theoretical importance. But now it seems the painting's interpreters may have got carried away.

A summary of the state of the art of understanding this work of art can be read on the website of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, which has owned it since 1995:

"Courbet regularly painted female nudes, sometimes in a frankly libertine vein. But in The Origin of the World he went to lengths of daring and frankness which gave his painting its peculiar fascination. The almost anatomical description of female sex organs is not attenuated by any historical or literary device ..."

In other words, the extreme selectivity of Courbet's viewpoint, the ruthless "cropping", removes this erotic image from any context that might soften or explain it, any echo of art history. That is what makes it so "modern", so much the origin, not merely of the world, but of extreme works of art such as Hans Bellmer's poupées.

But the picture has suddenly become more complicated. In a truly sensational discovery, the head of this previously faceless woman appears to have turned up. Apparently, French experts are satisfied that a newly found painting of a female head is not only by Courbet but is a fragment of the same canvas from which The Origin of the World was cut.

So Courbet did not ruthlessly portray just one part of a woman - he painted a full nude. It seems The Origin of the World is part of a painting that may originally have had a lot in common with Courbet's Woman with a Parrot (1866) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

Clearly the painting that included The Origin of the World was always bolder than Woman with a Parrot. The latter was intended for the official Salon exhibition, where its sprawled nudity was considered quite provocative enough. Courbet set out to be still franker when he painted The Origin in the same year. It was never going to be in any public exhibition. Instead the painting - or part of it - was sold to a Turkish aficionado of erotic art. Was it cut down to please him? Or was that Courbet's subversive idea?

It is important not to mistake the part for the whole. Courbet is a genius and his vision needs to be seen whole, as a radical realist attempt to fuse art and life. In fetishising The Origin of the World, art historians may have falsely invented a dada masterpiece instead of paying Courbet his due homage as an artist who saw life and death in all their grandeur.

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Gustave Courbet's The Origin of the World still over-excites art critics

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Gustave Courbet's painting The Origin of the World is a provocative icon of modern art. Painted in 1866 by an artist who shocked contemporaries with his tough depictions of real life, it can still shock today. It portrays a woman's thighs, torso, part of one breast - and, at the centre of attention, her genitals.

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Israel's Department of Justice was forced to intervene Tuesday in the controversy around a sculpture of " McJesus" - Jesus modeled as Ronald McDonald - that angered Christians in the Holy Land.

The Ministry of Culture threatened to defund the Haifa Museum of Art, where "McJesus" is displayed and where violent protests broke out last week.
'MCJESUS' ART SCULPTURE AT ISRAELI MUSEUM UPSETS CHRISTIANS, SPARKS CALLS FOR REMOVAL
"This work does not belong in a cultural institution supported by state funds," Culture Minister Miri Regev wrote in a letter to the museum, adding that the sculpture, which is part of the "Sacred Goods" show that opened in August, makes a "mockery of the crucifix, the most important religious symbol for Christians around the world," and could not be protected under freedom of speech.

But the Department of Justice disagreed.

"It is forbidden to block funding to cultural institutions because of the content they exhibit," Deputy Attorney General Dina Zilber wrote in a letter to Regev Tuesday, reminding the minister that the government could not interfere with the contents presented at cultural institutions because it provides financial support.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel contacted the Department of Justice on behalf of the museum.

"The Minister of Culture seems to have made a quantum leap," wrote ACRI's legal advisor, Dan Yakir. He said that while in the past the minister had instructed mayors or other elected officials to prevent cultural events when she did not like their content, it was beyond acceptable bounds to reach out directly to the museum. He said the move violated freedom of speech and expression.
FLORIDA'S BIBLE STUDIES BILL SPARKS CLASHES
The sculpture's Finnish artist, Jani Leinonen, wants his artwork removed -- but for a different reason. He supports the pro-Palestinian group, Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, or BDS, which discourages doing business with the Jewish state.

Much to the displeasure of Regev, hundreds of Christians, and Leinonen, "McJesus" isn't going anywhere.
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Nissim Tal, the museum's director, told The Associated Press they "will be defending freedom of speech, freedom of art, and freedom of culture" by keeping the artwork right where it is.

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Controversial 'McJesus' art sculpture defended by Israel

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Israel's Department of Justice was forced to intervene Tuesday in the controversy around a sculpture of " McJesus" - Jesus modeled as Ronald McDonald - that angered Christians in the Holy Land. The Ministry of Culture threatened to defund the Haifa Museum of Art, where "McJesus" is displayed and where violent protests broke out last week.

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Currently on display in Chapter Arts is a beautiful sculpture by Patricia Piccinini. I would recommend a trip to Chapter just to see it. The first thing that strikes you as you walk into the gallery, where it is on display in the entrance, other than the hyper-realist nature of the piece - the little boy in the sculpture requires a double-take to check that it is not a real person sitting in - is the sheer warmth between the two characters. If you look straight away to the right of the piece - which you are likely to do as it is here that the two characters portrayed meet in a sleepy embrace - you may assume it is a grandmother contentedly asleep in the arms of her grandson, and every young boy, or even grown man might feel an affinity with this immediate image.

As you cast your eyes over the entire piece, you quickly realise that the grandmother is not a naked human after all, but some kind of mythical creature, perhaps an elderly mermaid, for it has no feet, but some kind of flipper, with toenails that are almost like shells. Exactly what the creature is does not really matter however, because it's almost as if the apparent affection between the two characters is the more important aspect. The smile on the creature's face is so enormous that it's as if the creature has found a place of near-perfect happiness.

Perhaps this is to do with the fact that the little boy loves the mermaid. In the mermaid's mind, she might think it is a slightly silly affection - aside from the fact that she is wrinkled and elderly, she doesn't even exist! - but as long as the little boy believes he loves the mermaid, perhaps that's all that matters in the mind of each, and she loves him for loving her.

The sculpture deals very effectively with the concepts of belief and reality. As a work of art, neither of the characters are truly real of course, but due to the hyper-realist nature of the piece, we instantly are able to believe that it is a real depiction of a little boy. The mermaid character, while not a real creature, is believable for what it is. Clearly, the artist is trying to show also, as stated, that the little boy believes in the character, and believes he loves her, and therefore that belief is almost more important than love, or in some ways, has to come before it. Maybe it is meant to be a dream sequence, but still the concept of belief is significant, and perhaps whether it is possible to feel love while asleep.

The piece also deals with the concept of beauty. The little boy might be considered as beautiful - he is quite handsome, and also innocent-looking as well. The sea creature also, despite being naked, is completely innocent. Mermaids are of course traditionally depicted as young and beautiful, and here we have almost the opposite - an elderly, and quite ugly creature - but I suppose, with its long white hair, we are able to imagine that in its younger years, before it had started putting on weight, this might well have been an exceptionally beautiful mermaid. The little boy, already with the knowledge of mermaids being beautiful does perhaps imagine this - that the creature in his arms probably was beautiful, in the classic sense, at one time - but equally, he is able to love the mermaid for how she is now. So old does the mermaid look that in fact, she looks almost close to death, and for this reason, the young boy is also offering protection, guarding her against her fate.

But for me, looking beyond the concept of the work, I think the sculpture works overall in the way that it immediately grabs your attention. The phenomenal close attention to detail helps with this, and it is a skill of the hyper-realist artist that always impresses me, the way they are able to depict a mythical being in such stunning detail as to make it believable. Despite being a cold sculpture, the artist has also depicted real warmth and love. It is a piece that will be appreciated by any wide-eyed visiting children, and warm-hearted adults alike.

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Patricia Piccinini, "The Long Awaited", Chapter, until 04/11/12

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Currently on display in Chapter Arts is a beautiful sculpture by Patricia Piccinini. I would recommend a trip to Chapter just to see it.

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The appointment of a new director to South Korea's National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) last week has extenuated the concerns of the country's art community over issues of government and institutional censorship, with hundreds of arts professionals signing a statement pressuringthe museum to publicly declare internal policy reforms.

On December 2, the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism (MCST) confirmed the leadership of Bartomeu Marí, who previously headed the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and is currently president of the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (CIMAM). His appointment marks the first time a foreigner will direct a public art museum in Korea and also fills a position that has been vacant for a year. Petition 4 Art, a group composed of South Korean curators, artists, writers, and art students, long dissatisfied with the drawn-out nomination process, published its statement the following day; they will mail the document - which as of press time has received over 500 signatures - to Minister of Culture Kim Jong-deok tomorrow, ahead of Marí's inauguration ceremony on Monday.

As Hyperallergic previously reported, Petition 4 Art had protested Marí's prospective appointment in the weeks leading up to MCST's announcement, citing apprehensions over his controversy-ridden past. In March, while still the director of MACBA, the Spaniard cancelled The Beast and the Sovereign, a group exhibition at the museum, due to Austrian artist Ines Doujak's sculpture featuring former king of Spain Juan Carlos I in an act of sodomy. He also fired two of the exhibition's four curators before widespread protests eventually pushed him to resign from his position. His decisions had further repercussions last month, when three museum directors resigned from CIMAM's board out of lasting dissatisfaction over the organization's response to the situation.

Petition 4 Art's latest statement, which is published only in Korean, is not a response solely to Marí's appointment, but describes wider concerns about MMCA and MCST's relationship with the art community as the museum prepares to enter its new era.

"The second statement expresses clearly our deepest regret with the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, which has pushed ahead with the appointment while refusing to respond to any of our questions, thus ignoring the voices of the Korean art community that asked for clarification on the issue of Marí's censorship through the first statement," a Petition 4 Art representative told Hyperallergic through email. "In the [latest] statement, we demand specific procedures such as declaration of ethics and institutional reform as well as express our position considering a wider context."

Petition 4 Art is largely uncertain about how much control MCST will wield over the museum's affairs now that MMCA finally has a director. According to the group, MCST has revised MMCA's regulations over the past year, decreasing the director's say in personnel affairs and oversight of the collection while strengthening government authority.

"Now is the time for legal and institutional procedures to recover the independence and autonomy of MMCA," the Petition 4 Art member said. "The government must relinquish all attempts of censorship and control that would be of impediment to autonomy of art."

To ensure continued transparency over the museum's relationship with MCST, Petition 4 Art also demands that the institution outline and publicly declare a list of ethics that "states a clear will against any censorship or pressure from all authorities, from the director." Hyperallergic contacted Marí for comment, but he declined to discuss his vision for the MMCA until he starts his new job on Monday.

The group's concerns stem from an increase in claims of cultural censorship across many artistic fields in South Korea. MMCA is not the only organization that has faced external pressures to edit its agenda, as Petition 4 Art noted in its initial statement. Others include the Gwangju Biennale, where city officials pulled a political caricature from the exhibition, and October's Busan International Film Festival, which faced government funding cuts - a penalty, many suspected, for its refusal to pull a controversial film from its program last year. To continue addressing such affairs of bureaucracy and censorship and increase public awareness of them, Petition 4 Art plans to organize open seminars and publish further statements.

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South Korean Art Community Demands Institutional Reform Following Controversial Museum Appointment

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The appointment of a new director to South Korea's National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) last week has extenuated the concerns of the country's art community over issues of government and institutional censorship, with hundreds of arts professionals signing a statement pressuringthe museum to publicly declare internal policy reforms. On December 2, the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism (MCST) confirmed the leadership of Bartomeu Marí, who previously headed the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and is currently president of the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (CIMAM).

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This colossal work by British-Indian artist Anish Kapoor, once installed in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, has an obvious sexual connotation that is assumed by the artist. Renamed by the media "the 🤬 of the queen".

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This colossal work by British-Indian artist Anish Kapoor, once installed in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, has an obvious sexual connotation that is assumed by the artist. Renamed by the media "the 🤬 of the queen".

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Click for a surprise  .....                  Where are the homophobic?

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Click for a surprise  .....                  Where are the homophobic?

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Marc Quinn presents a comprehensive selection of works in an exhibition in Verona that gives the city a prestigious international importance. In the mythological home of Juliet Capulet, his famous works will be displayed alongside...

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Overview:

Gathering over forty recent works, DHC/ART's inaugural exhibition by conceptual artist Marc Quinn is the largest ever mounted in North America and the artist's first solo show in Canada. Quinn is a central figure within British art whose work is principally concerned with the body's mutability in time, its physical presence in space and its anxiety within culture. His work also poignantly explores mortality, beauty, kinship and the interplay of art and science.

Quinn's work ranges across a variety of media - from sculpture to painting, drawing and photography - and includes dazzling, if contentious, frozen self-portraits cast from his own head and filled with his own blood to frozen portraits of his infant sons made with their respective placentas and umbilical cords. The latest of these, 'Sky', is included in this exhibition.

Quinn's 'The Complete Marbles', a suite of sculptural portraits of amputees and disabled individuals in sparkling white marble allude to fragmented Greco-Roman statuary while slyly addressing heroism. Quinn has made DNA portraits of his family and of scientist John Sulston, paintings of improbable gardens, and highly evocative wax castings of people with life-threatening illnesses - 'Chemical Life Support' - where the wax is mixed with daily doses of the medications that keep the individuals alive. Another wax portrait of a serene young woman 'Beauty and the Beast' is coloured darkly by animal blood.

Digitally manipulated animal flesh is the basis for two stunning 'Mirror Paintings' on view, as well as for 'Cybernetically Engineered, Cloned and Grown Rabbit', a seven foot bronze sculpture, at once comic and melancholy, of a shaped rabbit carcass. Quinn has arrested the decay of flowers by immersing them in sub-zero silicone and made painted bronze sculptures of supermodel Kate Moss in extreme contortions. Other bronzes include a series of human skeletons, among them 'The Selfish Gene', which depicts a couple in the throes of love-making.

In 2004 Quinn won a major public art commission for the Fourth Plinth: his 'Alison Lapper Pregnant', a large marble portrait of a naked, severely disabled and very pregnant woman was installed in London's Trafalgar Square - a bold and powerful tribute to both disability and motherhood.

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Overview: Gathering over forty recent works, DHC/ART's inaugural exhibition by conceptual artist Marc Quinn is the largest ever mounted in North America and the artist's first solo show in Canada. Quinn is a central figure within British art whose work is principally concerned with the body's mutability in time, its physical presence in space and its anxiety within culture.

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In 1967, the Queen's sister, Margaret? created a scandal with this picture. She was in every newspaper at the time, people thought that she was naked. She was actually wearing a sleeveless dress.

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10 controversial works of art that shocked the world

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Some works of art are completely shocking. Here's a look at the formula for art controversy and what the work we hate says about our society.

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Artist Hong Sung-dam was on the Park Geun-hye administration's blacklist of artists, which included a total of 9,473 names that were to be excluded from receiving state funds or support.

His controversial painting "Sewol Owol" is now being shown for the first time in Seoul at Insa Art Center, as part of his solo exhibition "Sewol Owol and Candlelight," which opened Thursday.

The Park administration's political suppression of Hong was explicit. When the artist tried to introduce his large-sized satirical painting "Sewol Owol" -- which depicted the now-ousted President Park as a scarecrow controlled by her father, the late President Park Chung-hee -- at the Gwangju Biennale in 2014, he was censored and eventually banned from the nation's most famous art biennale.

During a press conference held Thursday, Hong stood once again in front of the painting.

"This painting became famous because of Park Geun-hye. However, the most important part of the painting is not where she is depicted. It is the other side," Hong said.

Pointing to the right upper corner of the painting, Hong said that the most important part of the painting is where it depicts the militarism that fed Japan's empire in the past and the victims of Japan's wartime military sexual slavery.

To have true democracy take root in Korea, the nation should come to terms with the complicated historical and political issues that linger in East Asia, Hong said.

An issue that the Moon Jae-in administration has to address is the atrocities that Korean soldiers inflicted upon Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War, Hong said.

"If a proper apology is not made on the massacres Korean soldiers committed in Vietnam, Korea is not justified in demanding an apology from Japan over its pillaging," Hong continued. "I am planning on visiting Vietnam and making artworks base on the Vietnam War."

The rationale behind Hong's argument is the need to eradicate remnants of old militarism for the sake of peace in East Asia.

The exhibition at Insa Art Center comprises some 60 paintings revolving around controversial issues, ranging from the Sewol ferry disaster in 2014 and the candlelight demonstrations that led to the impeachment of Park to the issue of slavery during Japanese colonial rule in Korea. Hong's first work on the Vietnam issue, featured in the exhibition catalogue, is not on display at the gallery.

"Some paintings, including the piece on the Vietnam War, have not been included in the exhibition as the subject matter is too strong and they could possibly overshadow other works. I will be looking for an alternative exhibition space to hold another exhibition comprising works that deal with politically sensitive subjects," Hong said, adding that he had pulled the paintings out of the exhibition and Insa Art Center did not impose any restriction.

Also on display at the ongoing exhibition is a painting depicting the first summit between Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on April 27.

"Sewol Owol and Candlelight" runs through Aug. 19.

By Shim Woo-hyun ( ws@heraldcorp.com)

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Once blacklisted artist highlights controversial issues in solo exhibition

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Artist Hong Sung-dam was on the Park Geun-hye administration's blacklist of artists, which included a total of 9,473 names that were to be excluded from receiving state funds or support.His controversial painting "Sewol Owol" is now being shown for the first time in Seoul at Insa Art Center, as part of his solo exhibition "Sewol Owol and Candlelight," which opened Thursday.

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avant guardist

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In 1989, Republican senators Jesse Helms and Alfonse D'Amato launched an attack on artistic freedom. They railed against Piss Christ, a photograph by Andres Serrano of a cheap crucifix in a tank of the artist's own urine. The red and yellow tints of Serrano's piss give this modern Baroque artwork a spookily spiritual quality, redolent of the light in old churches, yet for these culture warriors of the conservative right it was just a desecration and an insult, exhibited, outrageously, using money from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Their campaign took off. Museums came under pressure to cancel a suddenly "controversial" touring exhibit, The Perfect Moment, which surveyed the photographs of the recently deceased Robert Mapplethorpe, including his images of sado-masochist sexuality. One museum director was even charged with obscenity for refusing to cancel the show.

Helms was a pioneer of the kind of divisive right wing cultural politics that were later to bring Donald Trump to the White House. Now, just over a year after Trump's election, people are once again calling for art deemed offensive to be removed from a museum. Yet it is not Trump or the religious right setting up as censors this time.

When New Yorker Mia Merrill recently started an online petition demanding that the Metropolitan Museum of Art remove Balthus's 1938 painting Therese Dreaming from its displays, she quickly gathered more than 6,000 signatures in support. Almost as quickly, she got a refusal from the Met. Merrill puts her case squarely in the context of the wave of whistleblowing, revulsion and avowed reform that has swept the arts since the exposure of producer Harvey Weinstein's predatory behaviour. As the petition argues:

"The artist of this painting, Balthus, had a noted infatuation with pubescent girls and this painting is undeniably romanticizing the sexualization of a child ... Given the current climate around sexual assault and allegations that become more public each day, in showcasing this work for the masses, The Met is romanticizing voyeurism and the objectification of children."

Back in 1989, liberals knew where they stood: unequivocally on the side of artistic freedom. While museums wrestled with the right's pressure to close the "obscene" Mapplethorpe exhibit, the left were protesting on the streets outside, projecting Mepplethorpe images onto buildings to defy censorship.

Some will say it is a lot more complicated today. When it comes to banning art, I disagree. It is not complicated at all. Throughout history people have found reasons, which seemed perfectly good to them at the time, to condemn works of art. In Reformation Europe works of art were destroyed for being Catholic. In Nazi Germany modernist art was classed as "degenerate" and museums were ordered to take it off view. Do we really want modern liberalism to ape such illiberal precedents?

The case for artistic freedom is as clear cut now as it ever was. It needs to be stated unequivocally: censor art and you shrink the shared heritage and future of humanity. Who attacks art? ISIS in Palmyra, that's who.

Merrill's petition confuses acts and images in a way that is deeply dangerous. Art and life are related, but they are not the same. A painting is not an assault. It's just a painting - even when the content and style seem utterly offensive, you can walk away, leaving it to gather dust on the museum wall,

There are great works of art that portray actual assaults. Titian's 1571 canvas The Rape of Lucretia, in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, UK, is a lurid, lifelike and shockingly ambivalent image of rape. So is Matisse's painting Nymph and Satyr in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. Other famous paintings take it for granted that women are sexual objects. Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in the Museum of Modern Art shows prostitutes in a brothel being offered up as wares to the male customer in whose position the spectator of the painting stands.

I am not suggesting anyone gets up a petition against these paintings - but nor am I saying they are beyond criticism. It can quite legitimately be argued that many of the world's most revered masterpieces are relics of sexual oppression. That's the problem. If you want all art that has ever been made to conform to today's ethical standards, you may as well empty all museums right now.

Balthus of course may seem a special case. I totally share Merrill's discomfort with the way he depicts girls of 12 and 13. Elaborate defences of what looks very like paedophilia are pointless. Yet it is very easy to show how banning his strange art would open the floodgates to further censorship.

As it happens, Balthus was a friend of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan who, as well as patronising his art, owned Gustave Courbet's voyeuristic masterpiece The Origin of the World. It hangs today in the Musée d'Orsay. Should it? For it is intensely objectifying.

Of course it belongs in the Orsay, just as Balthus belongs in the Met. Sometimes liberal platitudes are a necessary bulwark of civilisation. It is right to criticise art, question it, argue over it - but forbidding it should be left to the fascists.
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Arguing over art is right but banning it is the work of fascists | Jonathan Jones

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In 1989, Republican senators Jesse Helms and Alfonse D'Amato launched an attack on artistic freedom. They railed against Piss Christ, a photograph by Andres Serrano of a cheap crucifix in a tank of the artist's own urine.

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Museum of Censored Art, temporary museum in front of the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Art Museum, Washington DC.

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